Stay Better Connected with Your Trading Partners o... - SAP Community

The new feature released this month (2311), empowers buyers to more effectively communicate important information, changes, or news to their suppliers by publishing announcements on SAP Business Network. No more disjointed information sharing that gets lost in overcrowded inboxes or sent to the wrong recipient. Suppliers can now receive pertinent and timely updates from their buyers, in the same place they transact documents with them. Additionally, buyers can ensure they reach all necessary individuals with their announcements as they can be sent to a larger audience within a supplier organization, reaching multiple individuals or groups instead of only a limited list of recipients. 

What qualifies as an announcement? 

The information in these announcements can include a variety of updates, such as upcoming events or meetings, changes in business or regulatory requirements, new service or product specifications, updates to contact or address information, and other relevant details. 

What are the capabilities of an announcement?

With comprehensive capabilities for announcements, buyers have everything they need to get their announcement and all supporting content to the right suppliers.

• Customizable content
  • Buyers can ensure their suppliers receive all the supporting information needed for an announcement with options to include relevant links to other sites, as well as the option for uploading different attachments.
• Multi-language support
  • With the option to send the same announcement in multiple languages, buyers can cultivate better global communication and collaboration with their suppliers.
• Targeted recipients
  • Buyers have the options of sending announcements to all of their suppliers on the network, specific groups of suppliers, or by country/region. This allows buyers more specificity in their communication strategy, as well as saves them time.
• Announcement preview
  • Before sending out an announcements, buyers will have the option to preview what it will look like for their supplier recipients.

How do buyers send them?

As a buyer, you can generate announcements by accessing ‘Create Announcement’ under Quick Links in SAP Business Network. Announcements can be customized by language, supplier countries and regions, or supplier groups. You can also add attachments to your announcements.

Once published, your announcement will appear with details like published date, author, and recipients. The announcement details will also show the number of views.

How do suppliers receive them? 

Suppliers can be sure they don’t miss any buyer announcements as they log into the Trading Partner Portal. 

• Loudspeaker Icon
  • When logged into the SAP Business Network Trading Partner Portal, suppliers will now see a loudspeaker icon in the upper-right corner of the dashboard. This is where suppliers can access announcements they have been sent. When new announcements are available for a supplier, a red badge with the number of unread announcements appears on the loudspeaker icon. 
• Pop-up
  • Additionally, a new announcement pop-up appears in the upper-right corner automatically. This pop-up displays details about the latest announcement, including the sender's name, announcement title, preview, and timestamp. It also includes a View details button and a View all link that direct to the Announcement page. 
• Announcement page 
  • The Announcement page displays all the announcements published to the supplier. Suppliers can view only their unread announcements from their complete list of announcements by using the Filter icon. 

Continue to stay in close collaboration with your trading partners with using the new announcement feature on SAP Business Network!